All Policy Analysis by Soner Cagaptay

On April 6 and 7, after attending the NATO and European Union summits, President Obama will visit Ankara and Istanbul as part of his European tour. The visit seeks to build on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's March 7 trip to Ankara, where she underscored Washington's commitment to a European

On March 29, Turkish voters went to the polls to elect mayors of more than eighty cities and two thousand smaller municipalities, as well as members of eighty-one provincial councils. Turkey's governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) won 39 percent of the vote, the main opposition Republican Peoples Party (CHP)

On February 18, 2009, Soner Cagaptay, Mark Parris, and Ian Lesser addressed a Policy Forum luncheon hosted by The Washington Institute's Turkish Research Program to review Dr. Cagaptay's recent four-month sabbatical in Turkey and to discuss the Obama administration's policy toward Turkey. Dr. Cagaptay is a senior fellow and director

Europeans watched nervously during the December 2008 Russian-Ukrainian crisis, wondering whether Russia might cut off gas supplies to them as well. This situation was yet another illustration of the potential benefits of Turkey's accession to the European Union, since Turkey could serve as an alternate route for oil and gas

President-elect Barack Obama's administration faces difficult choices regarding its policy toward Turkey. Should Washington choose sides in Turkey's protracted struggle over secularism and democracy involving the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and its opponents? Can the United States bring the reluctant AKP to support U.S. efforts against Iran's nuclear

For the past several years, Turkey has balanced its relationship with the West with its relationship with Iran and Russia -- just as Finland balanced the West and Russia during the Cold War. Finland, at the time, paralleled Western policies but remained intimate with Moscow. In this Turkish-language interview, Soner

Download the complete proceedings. On September 21, 2008, Soner Cagaptay and Philip Gordon addressed The Washington Institute's annual Weinberg Founders Conference. Dr. Cagaptay is a senior fellow and director of the Turkish Research Program at the Institute. Mr. Gordon, a senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy at the Brookings Institution

What is the Kurdish Regional Government's current status in northern Iraq, and what implications does it hold for the United States? Is Kurdish independence a likely scenario? To examine these questions, a four-member Washington Institute delegation visited the KRG in February 2008, exploring its political and economic situation, its ties

In Washington, there is a growing consensus that the AKP is changing from a seemingly progressive, pro-European party into a majoritarian, exclusionist one. In an interview with Cumhuriyet reporter Elcin Poyrazlar, Soner Cagaptay argues that the AKP's image has been damaged recently because of its increasingly unilateralist approach in Turkish

On March 14, Turkey's chief prosecutor, Abdurrahman Yalcinkaya, filed a case with the country's Constitutional Court asking it to shut down the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and ban seventy-one of its members from seeking elected office for five years. He accused the party of spearheading "anti-secular activities" in

On February 21, Turkish ground forces crossed the Iraqi border in an attempt to dismantle Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) terrorist camps, following weeks of periodic aerial bombardment that began in mid-December. The incursion was partly the product of a November 5 agreement between Turkey and the United States to share

On February 9, Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) passed two constitutional amendments legalizing a specific women's headscarf on college campuses. The Turkish turban -- not to be confused with the South Asian male turban -- first emerged in the country in the 1980s and has long represented an